M. de Guermantes explained the joke to me. I wanted to tell him that his brother, who pretended not to know me, was expecting me that same evening at eleven o’clock. But I had not asked Robert whether I might mention this engagement, and as the fact that M. de Charlus had practically fixed it with me himself directly contradicted what he had told the Duchess I judged it more tactful to say nothing. “‘Teaser Augustus’ was not bad,” said M. de Guermantes, “but Mme. d’Heudicourt probably did not tell you a far better thing that Oriane said to her the other day in reply to an invitation to luncheon.” “No, indeed! Do tell me!” “Now Basin, you keep quiet; in the first place, it was a stupid remark, and it will make the Princess think me inferior even to my fool of a cousin. Though I don’t know why I should call her my cousin. She’s one of Basin’s cousins. Still, I believe she is related to me in some sort of way.” “Oh!” cried the Princesse de Parme, at the idea that she could possibly think Mme. de Guermantes stupid, and protesting helplessly that nothing could ever lower the Duchess from the place she held in her estimation. “Besides we have already subtracted from her the quality of wit; as what I said to her tends to deny her certain other good qualities also, it seems to me inopportune to repeat it.” “‘Deny her!’ ‘Inopportune!’ How well she expresses herself!” said the Duke with a pretence of irony, to win admiration for the Duchess. “Now, then, Basin, you’re not to make fun of your wife.” “I should explain to your Royal Highness,” went on the Duke, “that Oriane’s cousin may be superior, good, stout, anything you like to mention, but she is not exactly—what shall I say—lavish.” “No, I know, she’s terribly close-fisted,” broke in the Princess. “I should not have ventured to use the expression, but you have hit on exactly the right word. You can see it in her house-keeping, and especially in the cooking, which is excellent, but strictly rationed.” “Which leads to some quite amusing scenes,” M. de Bréauté interrupted him. “For instance, my dear Basin, I was down at Heudicourt one day when you were expected, Oriane and yourself. They had made the most elaborate preparations when, during the afternoon, a footman brought in a telegram to say that you weren’t coming.” “That doesn’t surprise me!” said the Duchess, who not only was difficult to secure, but liked people to know as much. “Your cousin read the telegram, was duly distressed, then immediately, without losing her head, telling herself that there was no point in going to unnecessary expense for so unimportant a gentleman as myself, called the footman back. ‘Tell the cook not to put on the chicken!’ she shouted after him. And that evening I heard her asking the butler: ‘Well? What about the beef that was left over yesterday? Aren’t you going to let us have that?’” “All the same, one must admit that the cheer you get there is of the very best,” said the Duke, who fancied that in using this language he shewed himself to belong to the old school. “I don’t know any house where one gets better food.” “Or less,” put in the Duchess. “It is quite wholesome and quite enough for what you would call a vulgar yokel like myself,” went on the Duke, “one keeps one’s appetite.” “Oh, if it’s to be taken as a cure, it’s certainly more hygienic than sumptuous. Not that it’s as good as all that,” added Mme. de Guermantes, who was not at all pleased that the title of “best table in Paris” should be awarded to any but her own. “With my cousin it’s just the same as with those costive authors who hatch out every fifteen years a one-act play or a sonnet. The sort of thing people call a little masterpiece, trifles that are perfect gems, in fact the one thing I loathe most in the world. The cooking at Zénaïde’s is not bad, but you would think it more ordinary if she was less parsimonious. There are some things her cook does quite well, and others that he spoils. I have had some thoroughly bad dinners there, as in most houses, only they’ve done me less harm there because the stomach is, after all, more sensitive to quantity than to quality.” “Well, to get on with the story,” the Duke concluded, “Zénaïde insisted that Oriane should go to luncheon there, and as my wife is not very fond of going out anywhere she resisted, wanted to be sure that under the pretence of a quiet meal she was not being trapped into some great banquet, and tried in vain to find out who else were to be of the party. ‘You must come,’ Zénaïde insisted, boasting of all the good things there would be to eat. ‘You are going to have a purée of chestnuts, I need say no more than that, and there will be seven little bouchées à la reine.’ ‘Seven little bouchées!’ cried Oriane, ‘that means that we shall be at least eight!’” There was silence for a few seconds, and then the Princess having seen the point let her laughter explode like a peal of thunder. “Ah! ‘Then we shall be eight,’—it’s exquisite. How very well phrased!” she said, having by a supreme effort recaptured the expression she had heard used by Mme. d’Epinay, which this time was more appropriate. “Oriane, that was very charming of the Princess, she said your remark was well phrased.” “But, my dear, you’re telling me nothing new. I know how clever the Princess is,” replied Mme. de Guermantes, who readily assimilated a remark when it was uttered at once by a Royal Personage and in praise of her own wit. “I am very proud that Ma’am should appreciate my humble phrasings. I don’t remember, though, that I ever did say such a thing, and if I did it must have been to flatter my cousin, for if she had ordered seven ‘mouthfuls’, the mouths, if I may so express myself, would have been a round dozen if not more.”
“She used to have all M. de Bornier’s manuscripts,” went on the Princess, still speaking of Mme. d’Heudicourt, and anxious to make the most of the excellent reasons she might have for associating with that lady. “She must have dreamed it, I don’t believe she ever even knew him,” said the Duchess. “What is really interesting about him is that he kept up a correspondence with people of different nationalities at the same time,” put in the Vicomtesse d’Arpajon who, allied to the principal ducal and even reigning families of Europe, was always glad that people should be reminded of the fact. “Surely, Oriane,” said M. de Guermantes, with ulterior purpose, “you can’t have forgotten that dinner-party where you had M. de Bornier sitting next to you!” “But, Basin,” the Duchess interrupted him, “if you mean to inform me that I knew M. de Bornier, why of course I did, he even called upon me several times, but I could never bring myself to invite him to the house because I should always have been obliged to have it disinfected afterwards with formol. As for the dinner you mean, I remember it only too well, but it was certainly not at Zénaïde’s, who never set eyes on Bornier in her life, and would probably think if you spoke to her of the Fille de Roland that you meant a Bonaparte Princess who was said at one time to be engaged to the son of the King of Greece; no, it was at the Austrian Embassy. Dear Hoyos imagined he was giving me a great treat by planting on the chair next to mine that pestiferous academician. I quite thought I had a squadron of mounted police sitting beside me. I was obliged to stop my nose as best I could, all through dinner; until the gruyère came round I didn’t dare to breathe.” M. de Guermantes, whose secret object was attained, made a furtive examination of his guests’ faces to judge the effect of the Duchess’s pleasantry. “You were speaking of correspondence; I must say, I thought Gambetta’s admirable,” she went on, to shew that she was not afraid to be found taking an interest in a proletarian and a radical. M. de Bréauté, who fully appreciated the brilliance of this feat of daring, gazed round him with an eye at once flashing and affectionate, after which he wiped his monocle.
“Gad, it’s infernally dull that Fille de Roland,” said M. de Guermantes, with the satisfaction[satisfaction] which he derived from the sense of his own superiority to a work which had bored him so, perhaps also from the suave mari magno feeling one has in the middle of a good dinner, when one recalls so terrible an evening in the past. “Still, there were some quite good lines in it, and a patriotic sentiment.”
I let it be understood that I had no admiration for M. de Bornier. “Indeed! You have some fault to find with him?” the Duke asked with a note of curiosity, for he always imagined when anyone spoke ill of a man that it must be on account of a personal resentment, just as to speak well of a woman marked the beginning of a love-affair. “I see you’ve got your knife into him. What did he do to you? You must tell us. Why yes, there must be some skeleton in the cupboard or you wouldn’t run him down. It’s long-winded, the Fille de Roland, but it’s quite strong in parts.” “Strong is just the right word for an author who smelt like that,” Mme. de Guermantes broke in sarcastically. “If this poor boy ever found himself face to face with him, I can quite understand that he carried away an impression in his nostrils!” “I must confess, though, to Ma’am,” the Duke went on, addressing the Princesse de Parme, “that quite apart from the Fille de Roland, in literature and even in music I am terribly old-fashioned; no old nightingale can be too stale for my taste. You won’t believe me, perhaps, but in the evenings, if my wife sits down to the piano, I find myself calling for some old tune by Auber or Boïeldieu, or even Beethoven! That’s the sort of thing that appeals to me. As for Wagner, he sends me to sleep at once.” “You are wrong there,” said Mme. de Guermantes, “in spite of his insufferable long-windedness, Wagner was a genius. Lohengrin is a masterpiece. Even in Tristan there are some amusing passages scattered about. And the Chorus of Spinners in the Flying Dutchman is a perfect marvel.” “A’n’t I right, Babal,” said M. de Guermantes, turning to M. de Bréauté, “what we like is:
Les rendez-vous de noble compagnie
Se donnent tous en ce charmant séjour.
It’s delicious. And Fra Diavolo, and the Magic Flute, and the Chalet, and the Marriage of Figaro, and the Diamants de la Couronne—there’s music for you! It’s the same thing in literature. For instance, I adore Balzac, the Bal de Sceaux, the Mohicans de Paris.” “Oh, my dear, if you are going to begin about Balzac, we shall never hear the end of it; do wait, keep it for some evening when Mémé’s here. He’s even better, he knows it all by heart.” Irritated by his wife’s interruption, the Duke held her for some seconds under the fire of a menacing silence. And his huntsman’s eyes reminded me of a brace of loaded pistols. Meanwhile Mme. d’Arpajon had been exchanging with the Princesse de Parme, upon tragic and other kinds of poetry, a series of remarks which did not reach me distinctly until I caught the following from Mme. d’Arpajon: “Oh, Ma’am is sure to be right; I quite admit he makes the world seem ugly, because he’s unable to distinguish between ugliness and beauty, or rather because his insufferable vanity makes him believe that everything he says is beautiful; I agree with your Highness that in the piece we are speaking of there are some ridiculous things, quite unintelligible, errors of taste, that it is difficult to understand, that it’s as much trouble to read as if it was written in Russian or Chinese, for of course it’s anything in the world but French, still when one has taken the trouble, how richly one is rewarded, it’s so full of imagination!” Of this little lecture I had missed the opening sentences. I gathered in the end not only that the poet incapable of distinguishing between beauty and ugliness was Victor Hugo, but furthermore that the poem which was as difficult to understand as Chinese or Russian was
Lorsque l’enfant paraît, le cercle de famille
Applaudit à grands cris.
a piece dating from the poet’s earliest period, and perhaps even nearer to Mme. Deshoulières than to the Victor Hugo of the Légende des Siècles. Far from condemning Mme. d’Arpajon as absurd, I saw her (the only one, at that table so matter-of-fact, so nondescript, at which I had sat down with such keen disappointment), I saw her in my mind’s eye crowned with that lace cap, with the long spiral ringlets falling from it on either side, which was worn by Mme. de Rémusat, Mme. de Broglie, Mme. de Saint-Aulaire, all those distinguished women who in their fascinating letters quote with so much learning and so aptly passages from Sophocles, Schiller and the Imitation, but in whom the earliest poetry of the Romantics induced the alarm and exhaustion inseparable for my grandmother from the latest verses of Stéphane Mallarmé. “Mme. d’Arpajon is very fond of poetry,” said the Princesse de Parme to her hostess, impressed by the ardent tone in which the speech had been delivered. “No; she knows absolutely nothing about it,” replied Mme. de Guermantes in an undertone, taking advantage of the fact that Mme. d’Arpajon, who was dealing with an objection raised by General de Beautreillis, was too much intent upon what she herself was saying to hear what was being murmured by the Duchess. “She has become literary since she’s been forsaken. I can tell your Highness that it is I who have to bear the whole burden of it because it is to me that she comes in floods of tears whenever Basin hasn’t been to see her, which is practically every day. And yet it isn’t my fault, after all, if she bores him, and I can’t force him to go to her, although I would rather he were a little more faithful to her, because then I shouldn’t see quite so much of her myself. But she drives him crazy, and there’s nothing extraordinary in that. She isn’t a bad sort, but she’s boring to a degree you can’t imagine. And all this because Basin took it into his head for a year or so to play me false with her. And to have in addition a footman who has fallen in love with a little street-walker and goes about with a long face if I don’t request the young person to leave her profitable pavement for half an hour and come to tea with me! Oh! Life really is too tedious!” the Duchess languorously concluded. Mme. d’Arpajon bored M. de Guermantes principally because he had recently fallen in love with another, whom I discovered to be the Marquise de Surgis-le-Duc. At this moment the footman who had been deprived of his holiday was waiting at table. And it struck me that, still disconsolate, he was doing it with a good deal of difficulty, for I noticed that, in handing the dish to M. de Châtellerault, he performed his task so awkwardly that the Duke’s elbow came in contact several times with his own. The young Duke was not in the least annoyed with the blushing footman, but looked up at him rather with a smile in his clear blue eyes. This good humour seemed to me on the guest’s part to betoken a kindness of heart. But the persistence of his smile led me to think that, aware of the servant’s discomfiture, what he felt was perhaps really a malicious joy. “But, my dear, you know you’re not revealing any new discovery when you tell us about Victor Hugo,” went on the Duchess, this time addressing Mme. d’Arpajon whom she had just seen turn away from the General with a troubled air. “You mustn’t expect to launch that young genius. Everybody knows that he has talent. What is utterly detestable is the Victor Hugo of the last stage, the Légende des Siècles, I forget all their names. But in the Feuilles d’Automne, the Chants du Crépuscule, there’s a great deal that’s the work of a poet, a true poet! Even in the Contemplations”, went on the Duchess, whom none of her listeners dared to contradict, and with good reason, “there are still some quite pretty things. But I confess that I prefer not to venture farther than the Crépuscule! And then in the finer poems of Victor Hugo, and there really are some, one frequently comes across an idea, even a profound idea.” And with the right shade of sentiment, bringing out the sorrowful thought with the full strength of her intonation, planting it somewhere beyond the sound of her voice, and fixing straight in front of her a charming, dreamy gaze, the Duchess said slowly: “Take this: